Environmental groups urge PM to curb aggressive rhetoric of Motorist party members

The Green Circle association of environmental organisations has sent an open letter to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO), calling on him to take immediate action against what it describes as increasingly aggressive and dehumanising rhetoric from the Motorists of the ruling coalition.

The letter, signed among others by People in Need director Šimon Pánek and Hnutí DUHA programme director Jiří Koželouh, specifically criticises statements by Motorists party leader and Foreign Minister Petr Macinka and government commissioner for climate policy and the Green Deal Filip Turek.

In recent weeks, Macinka labelled environmental groups “green terrorists” and described Hnutí DUHA as a “terrorist organisation”. The immediate trigger for the letter was Turek’s recent claim that by obstructing the construction of the Nové Heřminovy dam green activists had a share of the blame for lives lost during the floods.